Once when we were free

We’re so much more sensible now. We don’t live our lives as much as we arrange them and organize them. B follows A. D follows C. We take our medicine and our shots because the doctor says so.

We’re careful, because accidents happen.

We don’t say what’s on our minds a lot of the time, because other people might pass that on, and who knows? We might get into trouble.

But once upon a time, when we were young, we were free. We didn’t take any shots and when we got sick we recovered. We were stronger than kids are now. We didn’t ask for much protection and we weren’t given much, and we survived.

There was no talk about the needs of the group. When we went to school, we weren’t told about ways we could help others. That was something we learned at home. We weren’t taught about The Planet. Instead, we learned to mind our own business, and it wasn’t considered a crime.

When we played games, adults weren’t hovering or coaching every move we made. We found places to play on our own, and we figured it all out. There were winners and losers. There were no plastic trophies. We played one game, then another. We lost, we won. We competed. Losing wasn’t a tragedy.

There were no childhood “conditions” like ADHD or Bipolar, and we certainly didn’t take any brain drugs. The idea of a kid going to a psychiatrist would have been absurd.

People were who they were. They had lives. They had personalities. They had eccentricities, and we lived with that.

There was far less whispering and gossip. There were fewer cliques. Kids didn’t display their possessions like signs of their identity. A kid who did was ignored, even shunned.

Kids never acted like little adults. They didn’t dress like adults. They didn’t want to be fake adults.

Our parents didn’t consult us about what we wanted. We weren’t part of the decision-making process. They didn’t need us for that.

We weren’t “extra-special.” We weren’t delicate.

No one asked us about our feelings. If they had, we would have been confused. Feelings? What’s that? We were alive. We knew it. We didn’t need anything else.

We could spot liars a mile away. We could spot phonies from across town. We knew who the really crazy adults were, and we stayed away from them.

We didn’t need gadgets and machines to be happy. We only needed a place to play. If you wanted a spot to be alone, you found one, and you read a book.

There was no compulsion to “share.”

School wasn’t some kind of social laboratory or baby-sitting service. We were there to learn, and if we worked hard, we did. Teachers knew how to teach. The textbooks were adequate. Whether the books were new or old didn’t matter.

Kids weren’t taught how to be little victims.

Sex was a private issue. You were taught about that at home or not at all. You certainly didn’t learn about it in school. That would have been ridiculous.

Some of us remember being young, and now, we still have that North Star. We still don’t take our shots and medicines. We still don’t take every word a doctor says as coming from God. We still know losing isn’t a crime or an occasion for tragic theater.

We still know how to be alone. We still think gossip and cliques are for morons. We still feel free. We still want to live, and we do.

We still resent intrusion on our freedom, and we speak up and draw the line. We still like winning and competing. We still like achieving on our own.

We can spot self-styled messiahs at a hundred yards.

As kids, we lived in our imaginations, and we haven’t forgotten how. It’s part of who and what we are.

We aren’t bored every twelve seconds. We can find things to do.

We don’t need reassurances every day. We don’t need people hovering over us. We don’t need to whine and complain to get attention. We don’t need endless amounts of “support.”

We don’t need politicians who lie to us constantly, who pretend we’re stupid. We don’t need ideology shoved own our throats. Our ideology is freedom. We know what it is and what it feels like, and we know no one gives it to us. It’s ours to begin with. We can throw it away, but then that’s on us.

If two candidates are running for office, and we don’t like either one, we don’t vote. We don’t need to think about that very hard. It’s obvious. Two idiots, two criminals? Forget it. Walk away.

We don’t fawn, we don’t get in other people’s way. We don’t think “children are the future.” Every generation is a new generation. It always has been. We don’t need to inject some special doctrine to pump up children. We remember what being a child is. That’s enough.

When we were kids, there was no exaggerated sense of loyalty. We were independent. Now, we see what can be accomplished in the name of obligation, group-cohesion, and loyalty: crimes; imperial wars; destruction of natural rights.

It didn’t take a village to raise a kid when we were young, and it doesn’t take one now. That’s all propaganda. It panders to people who are afraid to be what they are, who are afraid to stand up for themselves.

We don’t feel it’s our duty to cure every ill in the world. But it goes a lot further than that. We can see what that kind of indoctrination creates. It creates the perception of endless numbers of helpless victims. And once that’s firmly entrenched, then magically, the endless parade of victims appears, ready-made. When some needs have been met, others are born. The lowest form of hustlers sell those needs from here to the sky and beyond. They make no distinction between people who really can use help and those who are just on the make.

We didn’t grow up that way. We don’t fall for the con now.

When we were kids, the number of friends we had didn’t matter. We didn’t keep score. Nobody kept track of the count. That would have been recognized in a second as a form of insanity.

As kids, we didn’t admire people simply because other people admired them. That was an unknown standard.

We were alive. That was enough. We were free. That was enough.

It still is.

When we were young, we had incredible dreams. We imagined the dreams and imagined accomplishing them. Some of us still do. Some of us still work in that direction. We haven’t given up the ghost just because the world is mad.

The world needs to learn what we know. We don’t need to learn what the world has been brainwashed into believing.

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Well said, Jon. I remember those days, having grown up in the 60s. The worst kids in school weren’t going to shoot anyone. We even took the suction cups off the toy wooden arrows and sharpened into points with our pocket knives. Remember that? lol

Dear Jon, I have been a following your website for many months now. Once when we were free… I feel so good after reading and relating to this recent blog. Just another clear and brilliant example of what an outstanding writer you are. I truly enjoy returning to your website and the beautiful sanity of your poetic (to me) writings. 🙂 I am a BIG fan. May our God and Creator bless you with health and longevity and I wish you all the very best in your personal life and thank you again for your continued clarity, eloquence, honesty and timeliness of your essays/articles/blogs. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

That’s not exactly, true. You’re a male, and so are speaking from a boy’s standpoint. And really, you, boys, had more freedom than, girls. Parents let boys loose, while girls were NEVER allowed that.

NEVER! Not even in the West.

When a family member took a little girl to visit others, the girls had to dress up, and sit in the parlor, keeping still, while the adults “visited,.” and the little girl wiggled around, she was scolded. Little girls could not run, or run in the open air. When an adult did carpentry work, and wanted to learn, the girl was scolded and told to leave.

And let me tell you, when groups of boys were together, playing marbles, or tops, or cards, they made it clear, they didn’t want a girl around.

Girls had to toe the line, and particularly, after menarche. Wen they aware MORE aware tht they were females. They couldn’t try cigarettes, or wander around the neighborhood after school, or run, or any of the things boys did. Girls had to dress up on the particular “holy” days of their religion, and go to temple or church. Girls had to were pristine white gloves and hats, and petticoats, for special occasions.

Girls had to watch their reputations, unlike boys. In the days you you speak about, in fact, it was the girls that had to watch out, for YOU , boys. And the nonsense of their telling, girls, “If you loved me, you’d let me.” And girls, had to watch out for being considered “loose” – and further, “getting in trouble” and having a pregnancy without married.

So, it’s not true that children were freer in older generations. The divisions between the genders were present in the “old days.”

Well then, I find it funny that the generation that was free ended up parenting the generation that you consider to be fostered and controlled.

Your generation is the one that created what you dislike in society. Who else could have? Your generation are the parents of the current generation. And the current generation is over protected and controlled. Who could have done that except for those that raised them?

John: Excellent, very fine. Captures the essence of what many of us (in our 50s, and many of our children) who like food the way God created it, are glad to have loving dominion over plants and animals as the triune God planned, push our children to play outside in the rain as much as possible, work to raise organic vegetables, and wholeheartedly climb mountains, hunt deer, and chase Frisbees believe and pray that an increasing number of Americans (and Brazilians, Africans, Welsh, Chinese, and more) will grow to think and know is right and true and to be sought. –Brian in Salem, OR

Some of what you say is true. But I think you may be idealizing just a little bit. I grew up during the 60’s, too.
I don’t recall it all as glowingly as you do. There was a lot of rust back then that was just painted over and took another 10 or 15 years to corrode to the point of visibility.

A man’s home was his castle — which meant he was free to beat his wife and kids. Women who were raped “must have asked for it” because “boys will be boys.” The military “made a man out of you, manhood apparently being dependent on mindlessly following orders and killing whomever you’re told to kill. Those who dissented from the “official story” were pinkos and fags and fair game.

There was McCarthy. And lynchings and race riots. We ducked and covered to defend ourselves from the end of the world. There was a vicious little war against the Vietnamese — who’d never harmed us one bit — people who had modeled their declaration of independence after our own. They had censored Elvis’ hip-swinging, and now promised that the Beatles would be the end of civilization.

Cops could get away with anything — even murder. They knew how to get a confession back then, guilty or not. None of this sissy “Constitutional rights” nonsense. But it was mostly all right because they focused on blacks and the poor, people with no voice who didn’t matter anyway.

Ike warned us but we didn’t listen. And they murdered Medgar, and Jack and Martin and Bobby.

In short, the past was prologue, and the seeds of what we see now were planted deeply and well-fertilized, and I trust you know what with.

If only we could have seen this far down the road as kids.
Could it be that the Scriptures are true and that nothing has been done
outside of a Master PLAN that was set in motion way back in the beginning. To know that we as humans have the opportunity live forever. Lets not blow that opportunity offered us. The next time is forever not just a few years.
I do believe that just as we read this with a sad heart that our children
did not have what we had as a nation should cause us all to repent for not doing more to keep it the way it was.
With all the things going on back then they were a million times better than today. We are the end as a nation we have rejected the “Old Paths” and like the prophets told us it will be hell to pay.

Thank you once again, Jon, for confirming my suspicions that things are all crazy right now in this world, and my hopes that there are others who feel how wrong it all is. May we live to see better days again.

Great article! They say you know you are getting old when you can say “I miss the good old days” and really mean it. Well…..color me old then, for I DO miss the America I was born and raised in. I don’t recognize what is has become these days.